Advances in semiconductor technology have allowed wireless communication devices, such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDA's) and pagers, to become smaller and smaller. However, the antenna systems for these devices have not evolved at the same pace because antenna efficiency generally decreases with reductions in antenna size. To maintain reasonable gain and non-directional receive/transmit patterns, most conventional antenna designs have relied on external monopole antennas, either fixed or telescoping. Other designs have realized internal antennas of different varieties (e.g., monopole, dipole, helical and patch antennas). However, these antennas are susceptible to performance degradation due to the proximity of other components. For example, coupling to the electric fields of internal components (e.g. oscillators, amplifiers, mixers) can degrade the signal-to-noise ratio of the receiving section of the wireless device, and internal ground planes and metallic enclosures can distort antennas patterns or completely block transmission and reception in some directions. Therefore, in order to obtain reasonable antenna performance, these internal antennas are normally kept away from other components in the wireless device by placing them in separate areas, adding size and volume to the wireless devices.